Sequence Aberration
by Jelynne
Summary: This is the day that he finally broke for good.


I thought I'd write something for Halloween this year. And it was even completed on time for once. Hurrah! 

Oh, and perhaps I should mention that there's a light gore warning? It _is_ meant to be Halloween-fic, after all.

That's right, I still don't own Naruto. Yes, the lack of proprietorship burns, but you get used to it after a while.

There aren't really any spoilers, though I think it would possibly help to be at least partway through the Chuunin Exams arc.

* * *

**Sequence Aberration**

* * *

"Will you dance with me?" he asked, and held out his hand towards her. 

Sakura, arrested in her headlong dash by the sight before her, pressed her knuckles to her lips, her eyes wide and glassy.

The grass - the very ground itself - was matted, in places saturated, with thick blood. The hand he held toward her was thickly streaked with the stuff. Her fist still against her mouth, Sakura slowly sank to her knees, unable to look away.

"God," she all but whispered to him, "what have you done?" Her eyes filled with horror as she continued, her voice rising into a sound that was almost a shriek, but closer to a wail. "Sasuke, what have you done?"

The blood smeared across his face could never be so red as his eyes as his lips moved in an attempt at a smile.

"It's alright, Sakura," he told her. He advanced toward her as he continued. "It's all over."

She breathed in as a gasp, jerking herself to her feet and stumbling backwards away from him, suddenly unwilling to allow him any closer. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the blood. Sasuke stopped moving towards her, his brows beginning to knit in puzzlement.

"Where's Naruto?" she demanded. Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that she could barely hear how shrill her voice had become. "What have you done with Naruto?"

"Naruto?" Sasuke asked, frowning. But then his face cleared. "Naruto's not here, Sakura." His voice was that of someone speaking to a small child, and he leaned forward, reaching to touch her cheek with his fingertips.

She jerked away from the touch before it could connect.

"He has to be here!" she insisted. "He was right ahead of me!"

"Right ahead of you?" This time, when Sasuke reached for her cheek his fingers connected.

Sakura froze, feeling the thick slipperiness on his fingers, the clamminess of his skin against her face. Her eyes flicked past him, over his shoulder. There was so much blood. It was everywhere, and none of it seemed to have come from the crimson-eyed and blood-splattered boy in front of her. Some part of her mind painstakingly looked over him, cataloguing the trails of gore as if ticking items off on a list. It was smeared across his hands, coated his arms in viscous-looking splatters, soaked the front of his shirt, dripped down onto his legs, sprayed up across his face in distinct arcs.

It seemed like years before she could force her voice through a throat gone tight enough to choke. "What..."

"You're frightened." He dropped his hand from her face, and Sakura stumbled another step away from him, acutely aware of the feeling of the blood from his hand still on her cheek. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, Sakura. They're gone."

Her lips shaped the word 'who', but she couldn't summon any sound from her voice.

Sasuke never noticed. The sharingan pinwheeled wildly as he kept speaking. "They thought they could trick me. They thought I'd never be able to tell. But I did. And I turned their trick around on them." Hip lips drew back from his teeth as his fingers flexed. "Always, always trying to trick me... Itachi... Orochimaru..."

Sakura bit back a shriek. "Where?" she demanded shrilly, casting her panicked gaze all around them.

She saw nothing but blood. Blood all around them, splattered on everything, but no looming shadows, no person except herself and Sasuke.

"Sasuke, what did you do?"

"I got rid of them, Sakura." Sasuke moved close to her again, and patted her cheek affectionately, smudging more blood on top of what he'd already left there. "I killed them. They're gone."

She bit her lip, trying to read his face and failing. "Sasuke..."

"They came to kill me," Sasuke explained, his hand still on her cheek. "But I saw through their trick, and I killed them first."

She reached up, and wrapped her hand around his wrist, watching the comma pupils in his sharingan whirl dizzyingly. "Sasuke... what trick?"

"They thought they could fool me by pretending to be my teammate." Sasuke yanked his wrist free of her abruptly loosened grip. "They thought they were good enough to fool me, but they were wrong."

Sakura's mouth dropped open. "Oh, no," she breathed.

"Aren't people supposed to dance to celebrate?" Sasuke's voice was childishly peevish. "Won't you dance with me?"

"Sasuke," she gulped for air, "Sasuke, you're not well. You're imagining things. We need to get you home, you should go to the hospital, they can help you, I'm sure they can help you. Naruto..."

"Naruto's not here, Sakura." Sasuke closed the remaining distance between them, one arm wrapping around her waist as he wrenched her into some sort of lurching waltz step. "It was nothing but a fake."

Sakura balled her fists into his shirt at the shoulders, tears springing to her eyes. "It wasn't a trick!" she sobbed. "That was really Naruto! Sasuke, you've..."

Her words stopped short as she suddenly choked, thick blood bubbling and sliding from her mouth. Dumbly, she dropped her head to stare down at the kunai Sasuke had just driven through her chest and into her heart, his other arm still locked around her waist.

Slowly, with great effort, she managed to lift her head again so that she could look at his face. The world around her was already fading, but she could still see him somewhere through the haze.

Her lips moved, only the faintest whisper of sound escaping. "Sasuke..."

"You thought you could trick me, didn't you?" Sasuke hissed, his breath brushing her cheek as he twisted the knife.


End file.
